Reducing the Risks of High-Level Radioactive Wastes at Hanford

70 Alvarez
of national importance and should have a commensurate level of project management
attention by the Energy Department.
DOE has a history of failed projects, cost overruns, and delays, 149
which prompted the U.S. Congress in 1998 to seek the assistance of
the National Research Council. The Council subsequently issued several
reports 150 ,151 which found that:
Environmental projects suffer from major delays and are about 50 percent
more expensive than comparable federal and private-sector projects;
Up-front project planning is inadequate;
There is no consistent system for evaluating project risks; and
DOE is not in control of many of its projects and had virtually abdicated its
ownership role in overseeing and managing its contracts and contractors.
For over a decade, the DOE environmental cleanup program has been identified
by the U.S. General Accounting Office as a “high-risk” program vulnerable
to waste fraud and abuse. GAO describes DOE’s management culture as one
of “least interference” based on an “undocumented policy of blind faith in its
contractors’ performance.” 152 The National Research Council also stresses a
greater role by DOE:
...as the custodian of public funds, [DOE] should not abrogate to contractors
project definition, acquisition strategy decisions, and project oversight. To
effectively fulfill its project management responsibilities, DOE needs to expand
its investment in human capital to develop a corps of qualified project managers
commensurate with the value and complexity of its projects. 153
As an environmental project unrivaled in its scope, risk, and expense, the
management and oversight responsibility for the success of this project should
not be abdicated to contractors. DOE must go well beyond its Cold War role of
serving primarily as funding administrator.
DOE should begin by establishing a full-time multidisciplinary, Hanford
HLW Project Management Group, reporting to the Assistant Secretary of Environmental
Management. This approach is well established by the DOE’s Office
of Science and has been endorsed by the NAS as a proven way to enhance the
success of large complex projects.
Concurrently, the pool of talent in the DOE and the private sector to carry
out DOE’s complex nuclear cleanup tasks is shrinking, which reduces competition
and can negatively impact the successful outcome of multibillion-dollar
high-risk projects.
In order to address these structural problems DOE should seriously consider
establishing a special program to educate and train students in the necessary
fields to prevent further erosion of key skills and knowledge that is fast